I haven't looked back since! Listening to music has never been so
easy and so enjoyable for me.

That is exactly the point! Easy listening.

At the moment I use an ordinary laptop with highres screen (Dell C810,
1600x1200). Attached are some Firewire harddisks. Player software is
Steinberg myMp3pro 4.0. Soundcard is Edirol UA1EX USB connected via optical
SPDIF to a Sony DTC59ES DAT player which makes the D/A conversion. I use to
build growing number of playlists for different dispositions. In this
process one feature of such a player software is very valuable: *Searching*
for music by title, artist, year and so on and then saving the modified
playlists over and over again.

After careful listening tests I have found that, for me (and everybody
else that I know), digital audio at 192Kbps and above is indistinguishable
from the original CD. I have therefore ripped my CDs and LPs to mp3 at
192Kbps.

Exactly my experience. I use the Fraunhofer codec of myMP3pro at fixed rate
of 192k.
I made numerous ABX tests (http://www.ff123.net/abchr/abchr.html) with
highest quality headphones and also found that 192k is fully ok for my old
ears.

It is essential to ensure that the mp3 tags are properly organised into
Title, Artist, Album, Genre etc. so that the powerful browsing and
searching
facilities in the Squeezebox can be used effectively.

Again, agree. Thank you for your hint to a tagger program (are there others
you tested?).

In summary I am now able to relax in my favourite armchair with the
Squeezebox remote at my hand and, within seconds, select the music to suit
my mood played through my hifi system in effectively CD quality. Nirvana!

Again...
I thought about using an USB soundcard with remote control (e.g. Creative
Audigy2 NX). Are there some experiences about this or these?

Juergen